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Oh wow, I totally didn't recognize that it was Stacy who was up there trying to get the attention for the sick person! Well, I'm glad it was resolved quickly and everyone was OK. Good to see you as well, if only briefly.

Well, Wilco is officially back on tour. Since we last saw the band Down Under in late March, it has gotten some new merch, a couple of new crew members, announced some new music and, as you might expect leading up to its biennial Solid Sound Festival in just a couple of weeks, generally kept pretty busy in Wilcoworld. In fact, I would even say that the world of Wilco is on the road toward North Adams, Mass., as we speak, except for the fact that the tour routing — not surprisingly — has the band back home in Chicago for a couple of shows after tonight's opener just up the highway in Milwaukee

I don't know exactly how many years Jeff has been playing these benefit shows at the Vic now, and I'm sure a more respectable nerd would be able to give you that information off the top of his/her/their head, but it's just shy of 5 a.m., so sue me. Suffice it to say it's been the better part of two decades now — at least since that memorable Kawasaki disease benefit show organized by a friend in 2005 that another friend and I were fondly reminiscing about before tonight's show. Jeff's solo performances in Chicago have understandably evolved since those days, as both he and his audience have go

Thanks, kidsmoke, or should I say (San) ta (Monica)?

Just before playing the final song of his four-night run at Largo for the year, Jeff tried to come up with a few words to summarize what the venue and this run of shows has come to mean to him over the years. And I, for one, am glad that they were recorded as part of a live-streamed episode of The Tweedy Show that his wife Susie was diligently filming from the back of the room — which has also become another tradition of sorts — because unlike some of Jeff's myriad banter over the course of four shows, it felt like these were sincere sentiments that you wanted to get right and so I appreciated

Well, there is of course a song on The White Album by that name, but the one Jeff played at Largo was a more developed version of the demo he shared on his Substack last year. Not sure if you have to be a paying member of the Starship Casual to access that post, but anyway.

As he strummed the opening chords to another midtempo number he was about to play — I'm pretty sure it was Evicted — Jeff paused for a moment and took stock of how the third show of this year's annual multi-night run at Largo was going on this Sunday evening. "I get a real hushed vibe tonight, guys," Jeff observed. "That's great, I enjoy that. But is it too quiet? I can play some uproarious numbers." And with that, he switched tacks and suddenly launched into a twangy and fun version of Casino Queen that instantly injected some energy into the room and explained how that had been the original

Oh, would I? They've never played a special set at Solid Sound that was specially designated as " Deep Cuts" or whatever. That 2015 Saturday set at SSF wasn't designated as a "deep cuts" set, even though they did play Panthers, A Magazine Called Sunset, Let's Not Get Carried Away and Dark Neon, among others. Wilco Friday "theme" sets at Solid Sound Festival 2010 no "special" set 2011 no "special" set 2013 Covers 2015 All Acoustic 2017 Audience Album Vote (Being There, plus surprise bonus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) 2019 Audience Karaoke 202

Did you mean T(opang)a, as in the Canyon?

Methinks you have used that one before. Have you considered a Ta(rzana) by chance?

Ha, thanks man. Should of course have cross-referenced Wilcoworld before I posted blind guesses for the new song titles like an idiot. I'll edit the original post above to reflect the apparent actual titles.

Geez, are we halfway through this year's Largo run already? Well, Night 2 of this four-night stand for 2024 gave us slightly less chat from Jeff overall than on Night 1 but did give us a chance to hear yet another new song as well as revisit two other new songs played on Night 1, get some "fucking pie" for Jeff's nephew Charles (Tweedy Show holla!), be very pleasantly surprised by a song off Wilco's first record (no, not that one) and listen to California Stars for the 4,000th time and genuinely not mind (as long as some sort of singalong can be achieved). I guess we can just start

Yeah, that word probably makes more sense in that line so I edited my original post to reflect that. Thanks for the clarification.

Just when it seemed like we might suffer a year without a run of Jeff solo performances at Largo, poof...four dates suddenly materialized on the calendar a few weeks ago. And thank goodness they did (and thank goodness for the alert friend who nabbed tickets on my behalf when they went on sale because I sure wasn't in much of a position to pounce on them when they hit the interweb around 3 a.m. Australia time after a Wilco show over there. It really does take a village.) Anyway, obviously Jeff had to move his annual Largo dates a little further down the calendar on account of his recovery from

tlock.

One final show Down Under, and now the Wilcos and the Wilcrew are all presumably headed back home after another successful run through their usual touring grounds of Japan and Australia. This final show of the run was in the more-conducive-to-rocking confines of the Enmore Theatre, which if memory serves, is where they also performed when they played Sydney back in the halcyon days of 2007 and 2008. Alas, I wasn't able to be there this time...but once again look forward to the reports and thoughts from those lucky souls who were. Here, via the good folk at Wilcoworld, was the repor

I’m afraid that’s a couple of notches above my pay — or ta — grade these days. You could ask Vince, I suppose.

Well, I am simply your ta - less servant as always.

Unfortunately Melbourne was the end of the Australian run for me this time, but it looks like the band had quite the time at the esteemed Sydney Opera House (with a very special guest in attendance, at least backstage) in their penultimate show of this Japan/Australia jaunt before heading back across the International Dateline. I look forward to hearing about it from some of our intrepid correspondents on the ground, who will hopefully check in here when they get a chance. I promised to at least set up the template here with the setlist, based on the good work from the folks at Wil

If there's any ground rules about seeing Wilco live that I could impart from years of experience, one of them surely would be don't miss any nights of a multi-night run if at all possible. Or at least do so with the understanding that you're almost certainly going to miss out on some gems from the catalog and an increasing simpatico both within the group and among the audience. I think perhaps those who turned up at the venerable Forum in Melbourne the past few nights began to appreciate some of that as the band completed its first-ever three-night run in Australia since it began touring here

Second night better than the first? I believe a certain frontman once told me that rule himself one time, but it isn't always true. And what makes for a "better" show anyway? It's so subjective for everyone, I have to think. Is it more banter, or less? Is it a matter of hearing more songs that they personally wanted to hear? Or is it a matter of happening to stand in a spot where the sound was superior? Or a perception, either real or perceived, that the band performed better from one night to the next? Or simply the people one is surrounded by and enjoying the show with, which can make such a

The start of a three-night run in Melbourne brings with it the same sort of energy it does anywhere around the world, I suppose. It's a place the band has played relatively often over the years — often, at least by Australian standards — and has built up a certain comfort level with the audience. And it's interesting to see old friendships renewed and some new ones made, depending on who has come out for the shows and who has been able to travel from where this time around. I suppose you meet more than a few folks as well who have journeyed here because their own home cities/countries have bee

Other than falling somewhere behind the Big Three of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, I honestly couldn't tell you where Canberra fits into the rest of the Australian cultural conversation except that it has the added cachet of being the nation's capital. I do know that until tonight's show at the Canberra Theatre, Wilco had never performed in the city despite playing many shows in Australia since its first tour here back in 2003 (and neither the Tweedy band nor Jeff solo tours had visited Canberra either on their Aussie excursions in 2016 and 2019, respectively). So this was a rare first, whic

Yeah, I took note of that as well. Who knows, but it is moderately interesting...

Not even close.